Boll fined, White unhappy over hit to head, that water bottle, Clowe on Twitter — and Tony Plush arrives

Good timing in the sense that last night’s 6-0 trouncing of Columbus preceded the arrival of Milwaukee Brewers centerfielder Nyjer Morgan at Sharks practice today. Had the score been reversed, everybody would have enjoyed the distraction of having Tony Plush in the house and the total media circus surrounding his visit.

The Merc’s Dan Brown is covering the pro sports’ cross-pollination, so I’ll only pass along what Todd McLellan had to say afterward, and then get down to the hockey business at hand.

“To have him come in and tell ball stories is valuable,” said McLellan, who knew of Morgan’s hockey past with Regina of the WHL. “I thought he brought an energy to our locker room that rubbed off on everybody else. Everybody was real excited for him when he got his shootout opportunities.”

(Let the record show Morgan went 1-for-4 in those shootout chances and Thomas Greiss did him a favor on the one that did find the back of the net.)

*****Breaking news: Jared Boll fined $2,500 for that hit to the head of Joe Thornton sixteen seconds into last night’s game.

*****Most of today’s chatter focused on last night’s game with Colin White making it clear he felt he was the victim of a third-period hit to the head by Derek Mackenzie a couple shifts before he tangled with Derick Dorsett.

And, yeah, maybe that was why White was ready to throw ’em for the first time as a Shark.

“We’ll see today if Shanny does anything about the hits and stuff. Mackenzie had a head shot on me,” White said. “It’s clearly a head shot. I don’t know what the refs were watching. I asked both of them and they both said it was shoulder to shoulder. But obviously we know. We feel it when it’s on the side of your head or your shoulder.

“I know you can’t see everything on the ice, but that’s a part of the game they’re trying to get rid of,” he added.

White said he didn’t think Mackenzie intended to nail him that high, but that’s how it played out.

“I think he was just trying to finish a check, but they’re saying you have to be under control,” White said, adding that the hit was captured on video, giving Brendan Shanahan’s office a clear view.

“If it’s me on him, I’m in the box,” White said. “It’s just that simple. A bigger guy hitting a smaller guy? That’s always the case.”

Early in his career, White regularly dropped the gloves. But since suffering an eye injury in a 2007 pre-season game, he’s only been in three fights.

“Obviously I don’t fight much with my eye anymore,” said White, who was essentially goaded into battle by Dorsett. “Sometimes in the heat of the moment your emotions get the better of you. Obviously I was frustrated after that hit. I was pretty ticked off.”

White was waiting to hear if the NHL would investigate after no call was made on the ice.

“We’ll see what happens today. They’re only human, like us, they make mistakes too. I understand that,” he said of the refs. “With the emotions of the game, we don’t need head shots. It happened the last time we were in Columbus. Same thing with Desi.”

*****Jamie McGinn said he was very aware of the dangers of being the third-man-in when White and Dorsett tangled, and that’s why he backed away as soon as those two dropped the gloves.

“I’m just sticking up for my teammates,” McGinn said. “He’s a veteran and he doesn’t need to be fighting.”

*****Talking about the rough stuff late in the game, Columbus coach Todd Richards said that someone on the Sharks bench squirted water on Dorsett as he skated by at one point.

“I don’t know if that happened at all,” Todd McLellan said. “I just know it was 6-0 and it was aggressive in the last three minutes. If that’s what he saw, he must have bionic eyes.”

*****That lower body injury will keep Jason Demers out of Thursday night’s game against Dallas, McLellan said today. Ryane Clowe will be a game-day decision.

Clowe, by the way, sent this out over Twitter last night:

@ryaneclowe29 Would have enjoyed being a part of that one tonight! #putonthefoil

My first reaction was, wait, isn’t that why he DID NOT play, so he wouldn’t be at risk if fisticuffs broke out because his facial fracture hadn’t completely healed.

Today Clowe clarified things:

“Watching the game, I wished I was healthy enough to play in that sort of game,” he told me. “It was little bit of a wild one.

“You’re probably right just because I could be in the middle of that and be fine — but I could get hit in the face,” he continued. “But I was still itching. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t itching.”

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.